


Autumn Love

by Asallia



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Autumn, F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon, Romance, Seasonal, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27266896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asallia/pseuds/Asallia
Summary: On a brisk October day, Nozomi decides to introduce Maki to some of life's simplest pleasures.
Relationships: Nishikino Maki/Toujou Nozomi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15
Collections: Love Live Halloween Prompt Week 2020





	Autumn Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lord_Byron_Mudkippington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_Byron_Mudkippington/gifts).



> There are a few interesting things about this fic:
> 
> 1) It was written for a Halloween prompt week I'm doing with a few friends (the prompt being fall/Halloween activites), and was the first thing that I was able to both finish and actually like. You'll probably see a large portion of the rest, just uh... eventually. Feature creep's a hell of a drug.  
> 2) It was inspired by a lovely little folk song you can listen to [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tISWjDg8igs) if you'd like something to vibe to.  
> 3) It was written all in one sitting in the middle of a hurricane. No, that's not an exaggeration. It was wild.  
> 4) The alternate title is "An Apple a Day Keeps the Nozomi Gay," but unfortunately I wasn't brave enough to use it. I'm lame, I know.  
> 5) It's a gift for a very wonderful friend of mine, as my way of saying thanks for everything he's done both for me and for a mutual friend of ours as of late. Hope you enjoy, Mack :)

“This is stupid.”

If three words could ever be enough to puncture the perfectly maintained balloon that was Nozomi’s composure, those should have been it. Maki _longed_ for something so simple in her relationship, some easy way for her pride to prevail over Nozomi’s stupid sense of capital-f Fun.

Yet here they were all the same, driving out to bumfuck nowhere in search of the perfect apple farm. In past years Maki might have immediately objected to the thought, much more content to spend the day inside or at the very least doing something a bit more refined. This year, however, Nozomi was in college and the two of them rarely got to spend much time with one another. Between the newfound distance between them and their increasingly frantic schedules, Maki just had to make do with what she could get.

“Lots of things are stupid, Maki,” Nozomi finally replied after a few brief seconds of contemplation, fingers tapping absently on the steering wheel. “People might argue that singing and dancing are stupid, don’t you agree?”

Behind the gaudy shades that she wore disconcertingly well, Maki could only imagine some smug glint tucked away in the corners of Nozomi’s eyes that might say, _Yes, I am dragging your parents into this conversation about apples, just try and stop me_. They were entirely opaque, however, and Nozomi’s lips were revealing a grand total of nothing. Maki heaved a sigh.

“ _You_ wouldn’t call it stupid.”

“And I wouldn’t call this stupid either!” Nozomi exclaimed. She cranked up the stereo system in her old beater of a car, blasting old Fleetwood Mac songs in a frequency register that Maki only imagined the recording engineer would surely have disapproved of. “Everything has its place in the universe, Maki. Singing, dancing, apple cider - it's all important, if you can see it for what it is.”

“Fine, I’ll stop complaining if you stop waxing poetic,” Maki finally ceded. “The CIA could learn something from you about torture.” Her voice yielded little support for the sentiment of Nozomi’s words, yet Nozomi seemed smug all the same, if in her own way. “Let’s just not stay too long, okay? I want to go to bed early tonight.”

“We don’t need to be there so long, just enough to enjoy what it has to offer,” Nozomi replied cryptically – leave it to her to make something so mundane seem practically hallowed. “Mind if I roll down the windows?”

“If I said no, would that stop you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Nozomi crooned. Before Maki could even blink, the windows were already tugging downward, wind immediately surging into the car. Nozomi sped up down the empty country road that lay before them, hitting fifty, then sixty, then seventy. All of Maki’s careful hair styling went out the window along with what little of her comfort remained, all ceded to a girlfriend who seemed to take some kind of sick, sadistic pleasure in tormenting her with loud classic rock and extremely unsafe driving practices.

And the worst part? Maki found herself smiling.

Before long Nozomi spotted what looked to be a farm and immediately pulled off the road. Maki supposed she should just have been happy that the first one they stumbled across wasn’t some kind of sketchy tourist trap – if anything, this just looked like a normal farm, plus or minus a few people and some signage.

“Where to first, Maki?” Nozomi asked as they stepped out of the car and walked toward the main barn, where a storefront had been set up. A few other visitors were drifting about, bags of apples and other goods in their hands and smiles on their faces. Elsewhere Maki could make out a second barn with animals grazing nearby, and a big sign haphazardly painted and placed up top: “PETTING ZOO.”

“Animals catching your eye, babe?”

Maki blushed when she realized she’d been caught staring, and she turned back to Nozomi with a hardened look masking her interest.

“The sign was painted atrociously, how could I not look at it?”

“Right,” Nozomi replied humoredly. “Well, maybe I want to go check it out. Would you accompany me?”

All Maki could do in reply was level a deadpan look in turn.

“Alright, well, I guess I’ll go on my own.”

“You would not- wait, Nozomi, wait!”

~=O=~

Since high school, Maki had carried with her a clandestine passion for animals, even if it came hand in hand with some small amount of disconcertion as well. She’d never thought much of nature beyond her childhood love of stargazing during her childhood, but Rin had slowly melted her barriers with that obsession for cats that she carried around like a badge of pride. The alpacas at Otonokizaka had surely helped as well, even if Maki never quite got past the point of finding them creepy.

Even all that, however, still wasn’t enough to have her immediately comfortable in front of an honest-to-god _cow_. She balked as it just stood there, chewing grass as though nothing were amiss and staring at her with that listless, vacant gaze.

“It’s kinda cute, dontcha think?”

Nozomi gently nudged Maki with a shoulder, her voice comforting yet nonetheless playful. Idly she stroked its head, but if it received any amount of joy from the act it wasn’t too keen on revealing as much.

“What’s its name?” Maki asked in a trained, passive voice. She moved a step closer, emboldened by Nozomi’s apparent lack of concern for the animal’s enormous gait.

“The sign says Bessie,” Nozomi replied. She jabbed a finger above, where sure enough hung a sign with the name Bessie painted on it. The brushwork was about as shoddy as on the sign outside, but Maki tried to be above pointing it out yet again.

“Not exactly a creative pick,” Maki noted with a chortle.

She stared at the cow and the cow stared back. It was almost enough to convince her that they might have shared a connection just then, in some strangely nonsensical way. Maybe Nozomi was rubbing off on her a bit too much, Maki thought with a shudder.

“Probably not easy to name so many cows, you know? I bet they just have to default to the easy ones.”

Nozomi grabbed Maki’s hand as she spoke and guided it to the cow’s head, helping her with a few strokes of its fur before finally letting go and allowing Maki to pet it on her own. Something about the act made Maki embarrassed, as though she were being treated as a child, yet at the same time she felt her heart flutter at Nozomi’s ever-present consideration.

“… Rhapsody.”

Nozomi cocked her head. “I’m sorry?”

“Rhapsody,” Maki repeated firmly, head held unnaturally high and voice attempting to project some measure of confidence. “That’s her new name.”

“That’s cute, I like it.” Nozomi offered up a soft chuckle. “Kinda flowery, but cute. Are you gonna put it on the sign?”

Maki looked around at all the people around them – it probably wouldn’t be the smartest idea, and despite her sudden and inescapable desire to rename cows she’d only just met, her rational mind won out.

“No, it can stay between us.” She smiled, if only slightly. Yeah, that was best. “I want her to have a name that makes her feel special, even if nobody calls her that.”

As though in approval, Rhapsody let out a loud moo just that moment. Maki assumed it was progress that the sound didn’t startle her into backing away, even if she found herself jumping slightly – much to Nozomi’s inner amusement, she was sure. She continued petting the cow a few moments longer, making sure to cover as much ground as possible along the surface of her fur before finally a long enough line had formed behind them that it was time to move on.

“See you later, Rhapsody,” Maki whispered as she bent forward to plant a kiss on the cow’s forehead. She looked to Nozomi and smiled. “Wanna go get some cider?”

The two of them clasped hands for the first time that day as they walked to the other barn, where the gift shop and restaurant were set up side by side. Nozomi took over almost immediately, using their connection to her advantage as she dragged Maki along to all kinds of display stands. Apple butter, candied apples, apple chips – despite how mundane it all seemed to Maki’s eyes, Nozomi found each and every item there fascinating beyond belief. Her enthusiasm almost carried an infectious quality to it, if not quite enough to prevent Maki from groaning every time they ground to a halt in front of some new apple product seemingly indistinguishable from the last.

Finally, after what seemed like a century yet had likely been no more than ten minutes, they emerged with only three things: a gallon of fresh apple cider, a disgustingly greasy bag filled to the brim with piping hot donuts, and some apple lip balm. Which was apparently a thing.

“Why donuts?” Maki asked with her brows furled as the two of them walked back to the car.

“You can’t have cider without donuts,” Nozomi responded sagely. “It’s a rule!”

“Did the cards tell you that?” Maki deadpanned.

“No, although I’m sure they’d agree!”

Nozomi hoisted herself up onto the hood of the car as soon as they reached it, a rather impressive feat considering how much her body had filled out in the years since µ’s had ended. Maki couldn’t help but stare upward at her for a moment, admiring how perfect Nozomi looked when framed against the setting October sun and the vibrant, pitch reds and oranges of the leaves. It looked like she’d leaped straight out of some classical painting Maki had read about once, the kind that made autumn seem less like a season and more like the very essence of life itself. Here amongst the falling leaves and perditious breeze, Maki began to understand the meaning that Nozomi was able to imbue in every single little thing.

The feeling was intoxicating.

With a huff of resolution, Maki finally joined Nozomi on the car, grabbing onto the hood and scrambling up with a bit of help from Nozomi. It was hardly a dignified act, but apparently there was some art to climbing on cars that Nozomi had time to practice and Maki hadn’t. After a few seconds to catch her breath, Maki reached into the bag greedily to grab at a donut.

“I thought you didn’t like donuts,” Nozomi remarked wryly. She was already munching away at one herself, but she paused long enough to grab two dinky paper cups and pour each of them some cider.

“I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” Maki replied self-seriously as she gobbled up the last of her first donut. “Oh my god.” Her voice came muffled through her full mouth, and Nozomi laughed. A second’s pause, a hasty swallow, a revelation. “I didn’t know how good these are when they’re fresh like this.”

“Told ya,” Nozomi replied with a coy wink. Before Maki could reach for another, she was met with Nozomi’s face as her girlfriend leaned in for a kiss. Rolling her eyes yet smiling all the same, Maki met her lips and lingered there for a moment, savoring the taste of that apple chapstick like it was the most heavenly thing she’d ever experienced.

The breeze had kicked up, but even after gulping down a glass of cold cider, Maki couldn’t help but stay warm as she nuzzled up against Nozomi, savoring the peaceful bliss she felt with her head buried in the crook of Nozomi’s neck.

“Thanks for today,” Maki finally whispered after a few moments of comfortable silence spent staring at the autumn landscape spread out in front of them. Apple blossoms streaked the fields with bright pinks, drawing their gaze all the way up to the golden hues of the sunset. “This was… nice.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Nozomi replied entirely sincerely. Idly Maki crooked an eyebrow, shocked that Nozomi hadn’t deigned to gloat, but she thought better of interrogating the subject any farther.

For now, she was just happy basking in the quiet glow of autumn with the woman she loved more than anything else in this world.


End file.
